{alltv} Garcelle Beauvais enjoys keeping her TV profile low

For Garcelle Beauvais, the best part about her new TV series Franklin & Bash (premiering on TNT Wednesday at 9 p.m. ET/PT) is that she's not the star. She leaves those duties to Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Breckin Meyer.

"I really wanted an ensemble cast so that I wouldn't have to work every day so I could be with the boys (her twin 3-year-olds) too," says the actress, a former model. Their dad is her ex-husband, agent Mike Nilon, whom she split with when Jax and Jaid were 2.

"Now that I'm sharing them with their dad, I don't have them all the time, which is the biggest disappointment of my life," says Beauvais, who also has a son, Oliver, 20, with her first husband. Regardless, "we're making lemonade out of the lemons we got."

When Beauvais is not on the set of the new lighthearted legal drama, she spends down time with friends such as actress Halle Berry, meeting for kid-friendly park play dates. But since she had the twins, Beauvais, 44, feels the loss of her mom — who passed away three years ago — more acutely.

"Sometimes my kids will do something really funny and I can't call my mom and tell her or I can't make a video and send it to her," says Beauvais. "The hardest part is the finality of it."

Thanks to her mom, says Beauvais, she has had a wealth of opportunities, such as her roles on The Jamie Foxx Show and NYPD Blue.

"I left Haiti at the age of 7 and I didn't speak a word of English," she says. "We moved to Massachusetts in the dead of winter. I thought my mom was trying to kill us. It was absolutely shocking but definitely a blessing to see the things that I've gotten to see and do the things that I've gotten to do."

Thinking of that makes Beauvais more committed to living in the moment.

"Women feel so much pressure to multitask all the time," she says. "I'm trying really hard to be in the present and not be worrying so much about what I should have done or what I'm going to do."

She's even taking "a hiatus" from her Twitter account. "Instead of worrying about talking about what I'm doing, let me just be in the present with what I'm doing," she says.

She advises her single girlfriends to do the same, reminding them that "while you're on the phone while you're at the bank, your husband could be walking right by you."

The single-again Beauvais faces her own technology difficulties in the age of Google.

"It's really weird. If I go and have dinner with someone, they already know so much more about me than I know about them — unless they're somebody famous and I can Google too. There's no more mystery, and that's a little sad."

For now, Beauvais is content in her personal life, even if that means sometimes being "squished in the middle" of the bed. "Both (twins) came into bed last night, one came at 4 and one came at 4:30," she says.

And professionally, she's satisfied as well.

"It's better to play one on TV," she says of the sexy, strong lawyer she plays on Franklin & Bash. "I didn't have to go to school for it."